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Object from Milk for Vrednosty (Stalin) 1996. Flag on silk A Meal to Remember 1995. Installation. Mixed media
Illya Chichkan
by Marta Kuzma Illya Chichkan uses the photographic medium in an installation format to reveal fragments of social history amid the present saturated environment of fast-paced transformation and subject to reinterpretation. In his former works, Chichkan photographically integrated aspects of domestic life, objects which illuminate past cultural stereotypes and social practices and staged scenes from family environments drawn from the artist's personal context. In his project for the Bienal Internacional de Sâo Paulo, Chichkan illuminates the staged document, revealing power structures and the motivation fueled by production quotas versus subliminal attraction for increasing production. The artist presents a commodity in the absence of a commodity structure. Referring to the concepts of mass production and efficiency in the absence of product differentiation and the Western concept of advertising's libidinal mask, the artist creates an installation which serves as a metaphor of the role women in the textile industry played in reaching the production goals of the various economic plans throughout the Soviet Era, and as a deconstruction of the historical documentary image. In 1923, Vladimir Tatlin, the incumbent Director of the Section for Cultural Materials (originally referred to as the Construction of Objects), proposed the priorities for the program which investigaded the processing of materials and initiated projects in practical design work, such as a man's suit, an overcoat, and a stove. The tasks of the Section of Cultural Materials were to: 1. Research materials with the purpose of shaping cultural principles; 2. Research everyday life as a specific form of cultural material; 3. The synthetic formation of material and, as a result, of such formation, the development of standards for this new experience. The Section developed two patterns of clothing norms of which were 1) a man's overcoat, 2) a jacket, 3) a dressing gown, 4) trousers: one set for workers and citizens of the USSR to be done by the Department of Cultural Material in conjunction with the factories of Leningrad Clothing Manufacturer's Trust.1 It was evident that even in the initial stages following the Revolution, the socialist agenda gave priority the clothing officials wore, while providing, at the same time, a stove model for women to use to prepare meals. Chichkan refers to the initiative, triggered by various utopian social-economic plans implemented throughout the Soviet Era, which directly engaged the worker in a type of social competition for production and promoted the drive to challenge the intended quota by producing more within a shorter period of time. The artist refers to the majority of the textile industry work force, who were often shown as the "heroines" of this period. The textile industry served as the basis for creating of entire cities, such as Ivonovo, in which 80 to 90 percent of the population was comprised of women. In referring to this specific employment practice, Chichkan alludes to the transformation of the role of women from that of pre to post Revolution, in which their basic functions shifted from that of a purely domestic and child-rearing nature to that of serving as an integral and mechanized part in reaching the economic and industrial goals of the Revolution. Such directives were initiated by the three strongholds of Communism in China, North Korea and the Soviet Union, who created their own internal mechanisms for the textile trade, with emphasis on heavy exports (Soviet metals and steel) in exchange for light imports (Chinese silks and threads). llya Chichkan integrates woven posters (traditionally found at "political agitation" sites, portraying Mao Tse-tung, Kim II Sung, and Joseph Stalin, three demagogues, represented on lightweight materials, metaphorically freed from the methods they used in the implementation of their policies. The artist creates a color composition of black and white, with metallic elements, to expose the overwhelmingly documentary and photographic quality of the Soviet esthetic. A staged documentation served as the basis of the Socialist system, every aspect of which was supported with officially sanctioned photography and film, and established propoganda campaigns. Chichkan's photographic lightboxes attempt to reveal the duplicitous nature of the system in its effort to provide societal sedation. The artist's photographs portray seamstresses from a present-day textile factory in Podol drinking milk. Amid the potentially harmful working conditions in these factories, the State adopted a policy of providing employees with milk subsidies, coining the support as Moloko za Vrednist or Milk in Lieu of Harm, a policy which continues to the present day. This type of placebo policy was also similarly implemented when officially sanctioned news broadcasts suggested that the nation to drink red wine to counter the effects of radiation following the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Chichkan presents abstract moments from this historical period with the intent to deconstruct that which seemingly served as a document or artifact -the "stills" of this particular social experiment. 1. Vladimir Tatin's "Report of the Section for Material Culture's Research Work for 1924," Art in Theory, 1900-1990: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, eds. Charles Harrison & Paul Wood, (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 328-329.
Chronology
Born in Kiev, Ukraine, 1967. Lives and works in Kiev. Solo exhibitions 1994 Alter Idem, Brama Centre for Contemporary Art, Kiev, Ukraine Group exhibitions 1996 Suggar Plums Visions, SCCA Gallery, Kiev, Ukraine; Commodity Fetishism, Ukrainian Cultural House, Kiev, Ukraine; The Family Album, Gallery at Kiev Mohyla Academy, Kiev, Ukraine; The Hermetic Forest, SCCA Gallery, Kiev, Ukraine 1995 After Five Years, photography exhibition, Bratislava, Slovakia; Multiple Exposures, Illya Chichkan and Sergel Bratkov, Mason Gross Visual Arts School, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States; Bred in the Bone, SCCA Gallery, Kiev, Ukraine; The Art of Photography from Ukraine, Mason Gross Visual Arts School, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States; Informatum, Center of Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland; Barbaros, Union of Artists Gallery, Kiev; Rot Medusy, Brama Centre for Contemporary Art, Kiev 1994 Project for Europe, Turbine Hall, Copenhagen, Denmark; Project by Osmolovsky, Regina Gallery, Moscow, Russia; Alcemic Surrender, Flagship Slavutych, Sevastopol, Crimea; Free Zone, Museum of Fine Art, Odessa, Ukraine; Expanse of the Cultural Revolution, Ukrainian House of Culture, Kiev, Ukraine 1993 Angels Over Ukraine, Gallery 369, Edinburgh Festival, Scotland; Genetic Mutations, Artists Union Gallery, Kiev, Ukraine 1992 Artists from the Paris Commune, Artists Union Gallery, Kiev, Ukraine; Still, Artists Union Gallery, Kiev, Ukraine; Group show, Museum of Kosly Kopinir, Kiev, Ukraine 1990 International Festival of Contemporary Art Expositia, Avignon, Paris, France 1987 Republican Exhibition of Young Artists, Gallery at Union of Artists, Kiev, Ukraine Collections The Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia; Regina Gallery, Moscow, Russia